Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Chinese premier visits India to boost ties

NEW DELHI (AP) ? Just weeks after a tense border standoff, China's new premier visited India on Sunday on his first foreign trip as the neighboring giants look to speed up efforts to settle a decades-old boundary dispute and boost economic ties.

China says Premier Li Keqiang's choice of India for his first trip abroad since taking office in March shows the importance Beijing attaches to improving relations with New Delhi.

"We think very highly of this gesture because it is our view that high-level political exchanges between our two countries are an important aspect and vehicle for our expanded cooperation," said India's external affairs ministry spokesman, Syed Akbaruddin.

Jasjit Singh, a defense analyst and director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in New Delhi, said last month's border standoff was unlikely to overshadow Li's three-day visit, the first stop of a foreign tour in which he will also visit Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany.

Singh said Indian and Chinese leaders are likely to review border talks that have failed to produce a breakthrough despite 15 rounds of discussions over the past 10 years. The two sides also will probably discuss working together in Afghanistan after next year's U.S. pullout and cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, he said.

But tensions run high between the two nations. China already sees itself as Asia's great power, while India hopes its increasing economic and military might ? though still far below its neighbor's ? will eventually put it in the same league.

While China has worked to shore up relationships with Nepal and Sri Lanka in India's traditional South Asian sphere of influence, India has been venturing into partnerships with Southeast Asian nations.

Other irritants remain in the bilateral relationship. China is a longtime ally and weapons supplier to Pakistan, India's bitter rival. Also, the presence in India of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile is a source of tension. China accuses the Dalai Lama of wanting to split Tibet off from the rest of China, but he says he seeks more autonomy for Tibetans, not independence.

Unresolved border issues between the two nations have flared as well.

In last month's incident, India said Chinese troops crossed the countries' de facto border on April 15 and pitched camp in the Depsang valley in the Ladakh region of eastern Kashmir. New Delhi responded with diplomatic protests and then moved its soldiers just 300 meters (yards) from the Chinese position.

The two sides negotiated a peaceful end to the standoff by withdrawing troops to their original positions in the Ladakh area.

Gautam Bambawale, a senior external affairs ministry official, said Saturday that India and China are negotiating a Border Defense Cooperation Agreement, but declined to give details. Indian media reports said the agreement proposes a freezing of troop levels in the disputed border region as the two countries make efforts to settle the issue.

Bambawale also said Indian and Chinese officials recently held talks in Beijing on the future of Afghanistan. China, India and Russia have discussed the matter trilaterally with the idea of giving full support to Afghanistan's government as it makes the transition following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2014.

Li was to meet with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh later Sunday and attend a dinner hosted by Singh.

Delegation-level talks between the two sides are scheduled for Monday. Li is to attend a business summit in Mumbai, India's financial capital, among other activities.

The border spat last month prompted the Indian opposition and media to pressure the government to take on China and call off Li's visit. The government, however, chose to go ahead with the trip, highlighting its policy of trying to widen areas of cooperation with China while attempting to resolve key differences.

China has become India's biggest trading partner, with two-way trade jumping from $5 billion in 2002 to nearly $75 billion in 2011, although that figure declined to $61.5 billion last year because of the global economic downturn. Trade remains heavily skewed in China's favor, another source of concern for India.

India and China have had chilly relations since they fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962.

India says China is occupying 38,000 square kilometers (15,000 square miles) of its territory in the Aksai Chin plateau in the western Himalayas, while China claims around 90,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) in India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Dorjee Tseten, director of Students for a Free Tibet, said Sunday that New Delhi police had declined permission for Tibetans to hold a demonstration against Li's visit.

"Tibetan activists are currently on the run evading imminent police arrest," he said in a statement, complaining of a heavy police presence in a New Delhi area where a large number of Tibetans-in-exile live.

Police detained a Tibetan man as he tried to burn the Chinese flag near China's embassy in the Indian capital.

Police, however, allowed about two dozen members of Shiv Sena, a Hindu right-wing political party, to demonstrate near India's Parliament, where they burned an effigy of the Chinese premier.

"Go back, go back," chanted the protesters, who also carried placards urging the Indian government to respond toughly to China's alleged border incursion. The powerful regional party held power in Mumbai from 1995 to 2000.